{"id":86907,"date":"2025-07-31T07:06:51","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T12:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/?p=86907"},"modified":"2025-05-20T07:08:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T12:08:50","slug":"chatgpt-ai-life-coaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/chatgpt-ai-life-coaching\/","title":{"rendered":"My AI Life Coach: How\u2019s ChatGPT as Career Counselor?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It started with a simple request: I typed \u201croast me\u201d into ChatGPT<\/a>. Its response poked fun at everything from the fact that I wanted to \u201cfreshen up\u201d my web development curriculum for \u201cstudents who probably think that HTML is a dating app\u201d to the fact that I am simultaneously teaching four undergraduate courses, applying to Ph.D. programs (I didn\u2019t get in), continuing to freelance as a tech journalist and working on my book when I have time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut, hey, you\u2019re clearly making it work,\u201d the chat concluded. \u201cUntil you\u2019ve got your Ph.D., five courses, two textbooks, and a bestseller, and you finally hit that point where you <\/em>need the crisis communications game just to fix your own life!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, ChatGPT thought that I was putting too much pressure on myself. But it also revealed something to me inadvertently: It knew a lot about me and might be able to help me with the existential crisis that had led me to overcommit in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I started probing it more with questions, like \u201cWhat kind of work would I be good at?\u201d and \u201cWhat commitments do you think that I should drop?\u201d And honestly, the tool gives great advice. (With any advice, however, I always step back and ask myself if the advice is good because it\u2019s what I want to hear or if it\u2019s good because it\u2019s actually helpful).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"SUCCESS+<\/a>\n\n\n\n

So, the large language model (LLM) crossed this threshold from being a tool I occasionally used to help prep assignments and outline ideas to somewhat of a life coach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a journalist and undergraduate instructor who teaches and writes a lot <\/em>about human-machine communication, maybe I am better equipped to understand my own relationship with artificial intelligence. But I also wanted to learn more from other people in the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI life coaching<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, if you Google \u201cAI Life Coach,\u201d you\u2019ll find the websites of umpteen startups that have the same idea. Since ChatGPT entered public conversation, entrepreneurs have been pushing the boundaries of AI and our personal lives, offering everything from assistance with dating app messages<\/a> to creating immortal replicas of your personality<\/a> that your loved ones can talk to after you\u2019ve died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media ghost writer Katie Middleton uses ChatGPT for content inspiration frequently, but she also was able to turn to the chatbot for help getting through some burnout a few years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was having a hard time keeping up with everything and figuring out how to manage everyday life with ADHD [and] executive dysfunction,\u201d says Middleton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had seen TikTok creators who were using ChatGPT to help them manage their own burnout and routines, and she decided to ask the app to help her put together a plan to work within her own capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has been life changing,\u201d says Middleton. \u201cIt told me when I should work, when I should rest, additional things I could [do to generate passive] income I may have been missing due to burnout.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middleton\u2019s experience and mine are not new. In fact, our reliance on AI for life advice goes back to the 1960s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Eliza effect <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While generative AI is a fairly new concept to the general public, the study of human-machine communication is not. In fact, there is an entire academic discipline<\/a> devoted to its study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our tendency to anthropomorphize\u2014that is, assign human traits\u2014to AI dates back to the earliest AI chatbots.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum developed a mock virtual psychotherapist named \u201cEliza<\/a>\u201d that would chat with users via text message. Eliza was not nearly as complex as today\u2019s AI chatbots\u2014it used pattern-matching and substitution rules to generate responses. When it didn\u2019t know a word, it would simply say something like \u201cplease go on\u201d or \u201cWhat is the connection do you suppose?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Users would often begin to perceive Eliza as human\u2014even when they knew that Eliza was not human, with Weizenbaum\u2019s secretary even requesting time alone with Eliza. This became known as the \u201cEliza effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our attachment to AI is less about the AI output than our own human nature and our tendency to form psychological bonds. In 2018, MIT researcher Kate Darling gave a TED Talk<\/a> about our tendency to feel empathy toward machines. She explains her own discomfort (and the discomfort of research participants) toward \u201churting\u201d baby dinosaur robots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even today\u2019s sophisticated AI chatbots are not humans. It is not possible for a computer to have an idea about the world around it. Instead, LLMs learn from large sets of training data and use the data to determine what to \u201csay\u201d or produce as an output. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this, some individuals find it easier to trust machines than other people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chatbots as trusted confidantes <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jaime Banks, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, and she conducts research on human-machine relationships. In particular, she focuses on how we make sense of machines and the perceived outcomes of these interactions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Banks does not work specifically with AI life coaches, she says that conversations she\u2019s seen in her research on shared understanding often do ask for life advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked people to give me their ChatGPT, like a couple of turns of conversations, so that they can focus on that conversation,\u201d says Banks. \u201cAnd a lot of them do look like that, right? They\u2019re asking [it], \u2018How do I deal with this situation? What should I be doing to advance this way or that way in my career?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, this makes perfect sense. People already have an easier time disclosing private information to other individuals through computer-mediated communication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of that has to do with anonymity, some of it has to do with control, some of it has to do with perception of distance,\u201d says Banks. And so it\u2019s not unreasonable to think that if we just take the human out of the equation entirely, and it\u2019s just the person in the machine, then that may feel even more safe, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re still talking to robots<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whether you are using AI as a life coach or not, one thing important to remember is that you are talking to a robot, especially when evaluating its feedback. ChatGPT will give you the advice it thinks you want to hear. Its main goal is to give you a desired response, and these responses can still result in hallucinations (where the LLM makes up information) and other undesired responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it is still beneficial to sit with the information that it gives you or do more research on what it says. It\u2019s also important to remember that we are talking to a computer and that its only concept of the world is what we have given it. Although conversations with AI can feel very real, if we step back and return to what it says, we may realize that the help we are asking for is too nuanced for a chatbot to truly understand.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a distinction between how we think about it when we\u2019re using it and how we think about it when we step away,\u201d says Banks. \u201cAnd perhaps those are both useful ways of evaluating any kind of feedback it may give us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo r.classen\/Shutterstock.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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You can find her everywhere as @nianorriswrites"],"rich_editing":["true"],"syntax_highlighting":["true"],"comment_shortcuts":["false"],"admin_color":["fresh"],"use_ssl":["0"],"show_admin_bar_front":["true"],"locale":[""],"wp_capabilities":["a:1:{s:6:\"author\";b:1;}"],"wp_user_level":["0"],"_yoast_wpseo_profile_updated":["1751494141"],"wp_user_avatar":[""],"dismissed_wp_pointers":[""],"molongui_author_post_count":["28"],"molongui_author_page_count":["0"],"is_geuest_user":["32422"],"wp_elementor_enable_ai":["1"],"wpseo_metadesc":[""],"wpseo_title":[""],"wpseo_content_analysis_disable":[""],"wpseo_keyword_analysis_disable":[""],"wpseo_user_schema":["a:0:{}"],"molongui_author_phone":[""],"molongui_author_job":[""],"molongui_author_company":[""],"molongui_author_company_link":[""],"molongui_author_custom_link":[""],"molongui_author_box_display":["default"],"molongui_author_image_id":[""],"molongui_author_image_url":[""],"molongui_author_image_edit":[""],"advanced-ads-role":[""]}}]},"custom_post_content":"<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>It started with a simple request: I typed \u201croast me\u201d into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.success.com\/how-to-use-chatgpt\/\">ChatGPT<\/a>. Its response poked fun at everything from the fact that I wanted to \u201cfreshen up\u201d my web development curriculum for \u201cstudents who probably think that HTML is a dating app\u201d to the fact that I am simultaneously teaching four undergraduate courses, applying to Ph.D. programs (I didn\u2019t get in), continuing to freelance as a tech journalist and working on my book when I have time. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cBut, hey, you\u2019re clearly making it work,\u201d the chat concluded. \u201cUntil you\u2019ve got your Ph.D., five courses, two textbooks, and a bestseller, and you finally hit that point where <em>you <\/em>need the crisis communications game just to fix your own life!\u201d <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Clearly, ChatGPT thought that I was putting too much pressure on myself. But it also revealed something to me inadvertently: It knew a lot about me and might be able to help me with the existential crisis that had led me to overcommit in the first place. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>So I started probing it more with questions, like \u201cWhat kind of work would I be good at?\u201d and \u201cWhat commitments do you think that I should drop?\u201d And honestly, the tool gives great advice. (With any advice, however, I always step back and ask myself if the advice is good because it\u2019s what I want to hear or if it\u2019s good because it\u2019s actually helpful).\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:html -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:html -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>So, the large language model (LLM) crossed this threshold from being a tool I occasionally used to help prep assignments and outline ideas to somewhat of a life coach.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>As a journalist and undergraduate instructor who teaches and writes <em>a lot <\/em>about human-machine communication, maybe I am better equipped to understand my own relationship with artificial intelligence. But I also wanted to learn more from other people in the game. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:heading -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-ai-life-coaching\">AI life coaching<\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Unsurprisingly, if you Google \u201cAI Life Coach,\u201d you\u2019ll find the websites of umpteen startups that have the same idea. Since ChatGPT entered public conversation, entrepreneurs have been pushing the boundaries of AI and our personal lives, offering everything from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.success.com\/dating-online-how-ai-affects-romantic-relationships\/\">assistance with dating app messages<\/a> to creating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.success.com\/eternalized-ai-digital-immortality-app\/\">immortal replicas of your personality<\/a> that your loved ones can talk to after you\u2019ve died. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Social media ghost writer Katie Middleton uses ChatGPT for content inspiration frequently, but she also was able to turn to the chatbot for help getting through some burnout a few years ago. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cI was having a hard time keeping up with everything and figuring out how to manage everyday life with ADHD [and] executive dysfunction,\u201d says Middleton. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>She had seen TikTok creators who were using ChatGPT to help them manage their own burnout and routines, and she decided to ask the app to help her put together a plan to work within her own capacity.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cIt has been life changing,\u201d says Middleton. \u201cIt told me when I should work, when I should rest, additional things I could [do to generate passive] income I may have been missing due to burnout.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Middleton\u2019s experience and mine are not new. In fact, our reliance on AI for life advice goes back to the 1960s. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:heading -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-eliza-effect-nbsp\">The Eliza effect <\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>While generative AI is a fairly new concept to the general public, the study of human-machine communication is not. In fact, there is <a href=\"https:\/\/stars.library.ucf.edu\/hmc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an entire academic discipline<\/a> devoted to its study. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Our tendency to anthropomorphize\u2014that is, assign human traits\u2014to AI dates back to the earliest AI chatbots.  <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>In the 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum developed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2023\/jul\/25\/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">mock virtual psychotherapist named \u201cEliza<\/a>\u201d that would chat with users via text message. Eliza was not nearly as complex as today\u2019s AI chatbots\u2014it used pattern-matching and substitution rules to generate responses. When it didn\u2019t know a word, it would simply say something like \u201cplease go on\u201d or \u201cWhat is the connection do you suppose?\u201d <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Users would often begin to perceive Eliza as human\u2014even when they knew that Eliza was not human, with Weizenbaum\u2019s secretary even requesting time alone with Eliza. This became known as the \u201cEliza effect.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Our attachment to AI is less about the AI output than our own human nature and our tendency to form psychological bonds. In 2018, MIT researcher Kate Darling gave a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Uq6XgrYBugo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">TED Talk<\/a> about our tendency to feel empathy toward machines. She explains her own discomfort (and the discomfort of research participants) toward \u201churting\u201d baby dinosaur robots. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>But even today\u2019s sophisticated AI chatbots are not humans. It is not possible for a computer to have an idea about the world around it. Instead, LLMs learn from large sets of training data and use the data to determine what to \u201csay\u201d or produce as an output. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Despite this, some individuals find it easier to trust machines than other people. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:heading -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-chatbots-as-trusted-confidantes-nbsp\">Chatbots as trusted confidantes <\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Jaime Banks, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, and she conducts research on human-machine relationships. In particular, she focuses on how we make sense of machines and the perceived outcomes of these interactions. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>While Banks does not work specifically with AI life coaches, she says that conversations she\u2019s seen in her research on shared understanding often do ask for life advice. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cI asked people to give me their ChatGPT, like a couple of turns of conversations, so that they can focus on that conversation,\u201d says Banks. \u201cAnd a lot of them do look like that, right? They\u2019re asking [it], \u2018How do I deal with this situation? What should I be doing to advance this way or that way in my career?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>In some ways, this makes perfect sense. People already have an easier time disclosing private information to other individuals through computer-mediated communication. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cSome of that has to do with anonymity, some of it has to do with control, some of it has to do with perception of distance,\u201d says Banks. And so it\u2019s not unreasonable to think that if we just take the human out of the equation entirely, and it\u2019s just the person in the machine, then that may feel even more safe, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:heading -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-you-re-still-talking-to-robots\">You\u2019re still talking to robots<\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Whether you are using AI as a life coach or not, one thing important to remember is that you are talking to a robot, especially when evaluating its feedback. ChatGPT will give you the advice it thinks you want to hear. Its main goal is to give you a desired response, and these responses can still result in hallucinations (where the LLM makes up information) and other undesired responses.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>So it is still beneficial to sit with the information that it gives you or do more research on what it says. It\u2019s also important to remember that we are talking to a computer and that its only concept of the world is what we have given it. Although conversations with AI can feel very real, if we step back and return to what it says, we may realize that the help we are asking for is too nuanced for a chatbot to truly understand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cThere is a distinction between how we think about it when we\u2019re using it and how we think about it when we step away,\u201d says Banks. \u201cAnd perhaps those are both useful ways of evaluating any kind of feedback it may give us.\u201d <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph {\"fontSize\":\"small\"} -->\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><em>Photo r.classen\/Shutterstock.<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p><\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->","tag_names":[],"post_attachment_urls":[],"author_email":"nnorris@mailinator.com","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}